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David Dobbs on science, nature, and culture.
I write on science, medicine, nature, culture and other matters for the New York Times Magazine, The Atlantic, Slate, National Geographic, Scientific American Mind, and other publications. (Find clips here.) Right now I'm writing my fourth book, The Orchid and the Dandelion, which explores the hypothesis that the genetic roots some of our worst problems and traits — depresison, hyperaggression, violence, antisocial behavior — can also give rise to resilience, cooperation, empathy, and contentment. The book expands on my December 2009 Atlantic article exploring these ideas.
I've also written three books, including Reef Madness: Charles Darwin, Alexander Agassiz, and the Meaning of Coral, which traces the strangest but most forgotten controversy in Darwin's career — an elemental dispute running some 75 years.
If you'd like, you can subscribe to Neuron Culture by email. You might also want to see more of my work at my main website or check out my Tumblr log.
Category: Culture of science
Nold came up with the idea of fusing a GSR machine, a skin conductance monitor that measures arousal, and a GPS machine, to allow stress to be mapped to particular places. He then gets people to walk round and creates maps detailing high arousal areas of cities.
Posted by David Dobbs at 7:14 AM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Books
a surprising study looking at psychological attributes that predict which castration enthusiasts who will actually go on to remove their own testicles, in contrast to those who just fantasise about it. ... Those interested will definitely want to check out the essay with which David Foster Wallace opened his essay collection Consider the Lobster " Big Red Son " opens
Posted by David Dobbs at 7:14 PM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Books
The 10,000-year Explosion: How Civilization Accelerated Evolution, of which I've so far read about 1000 words -- but I just...
Posted by David Dobbs at 9:39 PM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Books
I've had mixed reactions to Gladwell's writing over the years: I always enjoy reading it, but in Blink, especially, I was troubled not just by what seemed an avoidance of neuroscientific explanations but by an oversimplified argument. I was also troubled by ... well, I couldn't put my finger on it. But Joseph Epstein has:
Posted by David Dobbs at 9:34 AM • 5 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Culture of science
Despite the rain on my window, it's a fine day indeed, with many wonderful celebrations of Darwin's 200th ringing throughout the blogoshere.
Posted by David Dobbs at 3:29 PM • 2 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Books
For those teeming millions near Hanover, N.H., here's notice that I'll be giving a talk at Dartmouth at 4pm today -- Thu, Feb 5 -- about Darwin's first, favorite, and (to me) most interesting theory, which was his theory about how coral reefs formed. Darwin's coral reef theory, published immediately after his return from the Beagle voyage, was a sort of test-run for his theory of natural selection. It anticipated the species theory in both method and concept:, for it was bold, imaginative, and it explained a variety and distribution of forms as the products of incremental change in response to dynamic forces. It was also deductive as hell, and so flew in the face of the inductive principles that supposed ruled science then.
Posted by David Dobbs at 8:47 AM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Books
It was wonderful, for instance, to see Updike, beginning in his late fifties, set out to make himself a deeply informed writer on art, which he did; most of that work ended up in the New York Review of Books.
Posted by David Dobbs at 6:12 AM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Books
'Tis a smaller world now. John Updike is dead of lung cancer. The end of Rabbit at Rest: "Well,...
Posted by David Dobbs at 2:47 PM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Books
This is a rare book -- a serious but seriously fun work about the complicated process of thinking that is bright, lucid, and lively while still being true to the science. "How We Decide" is the thinking person's "Blink."
Posted by David Dobbs at 10:45 PM • 3 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Books
Micheal Nielsen gets swiftly to a problem many scientists (and not a few writers) have with Gladwell's books -- and highlights their redeeming factors as well.
Posted by David Dobbs at 12:20 PM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
PZ Myers 02.03.2010
PZ Myers 02.02.2010
Greg Laden 01.30.2010
PhysioProf 02.02.2010
Orac 02.03.2010
